There was an interesting debate on TV some days back on the issue of violence against women. One participant said tough laws and their strict enforcement is the solution. Another said it isn’t, because ultimately the violence will stop only when society evolves to a level where people respect the rights of women out of their own volition. I agree with the second view. In cases of violations of someone’s right, the prime issue is lack of respect for the victim’s right by the aggressor. And you cannot establish respect in the heart of a person through external means like monitoring him and regulating his conduct through fear of the law.

Monitoring agencies like the police and other arms of the law can’t be present in every nook and corner of the land all the time, watching every movement of every person 24x7. And who will ensure that the people enforcing the law don’t themselves become corruptIJ The police can police the land and its people. Need for the police arises because people go astray. But the police are also people. They also come from the people among whom some go astray. What if the police go wrongIJ And all the people who monitor the police also go wrongIJ After all, they are all people. And people can go wrong any time, any where.

It is people who become police, judiciary, legislature, bureaucracy, business empires, media. And it is people who become terrorists, rapists, murderers, thieves and rioters. We see daily evidence of the overlap between the two so-called segregated groups of law-breakers and law-enforcers.

The next point is, who will police the policeIJ The same goes for all arms of the law. Who will judge judgesIJ Who will legislate for legislatorsIJ Who will execute action against the executiveIJ Who will govern the GovernmentIJ Who will preside over the PresidentIJ And who will administer the Prime MinisterIJ

They can all go horribly wrong not independently but in numbing connivance. Do we need proof that they have all indeed gone wrong in perfect synchronisationIJ And the scintillating beauty as well as beastly ugliness of the whole thing is that all the “they” we talk about is actually “we”. “They” are the “people of India”. Just like “we, the people of India”, the basis of the Constitution. So if “they” have all gone wrong, it is really “we” who have. It is a huge, huge tragedy, but there is no point running away from it. Is there any doubt that all spheres of activity in all walks of life are stricken by the most obnoxious varieties of corruptionIJ

let me be a little specific to show my point. Are teachers teaching properly in schools and collegesIJ Has it not become distressingly common for private schools and colleges to function like money machines focused only on the number of students and their feesIJ Do not lawyers use ingenious dirty tricks to take their clients and the law for ridesIJ Do not doctors use their knowledge to turn diseases into industriesIJ Do police, administration, revenue, customs and other Government departments move against all the people in their jurisdictions whose corrupt practices they are aware ofIJ

let me be more specific. Even if official complaint is not lodged against them by a citizen, administration, police, revenue and other departments do take action against offenders whose offences they come to know of. That’s very fair and officious. Convenient and comfortable too in establishing them as esteemed guardians of the nation and its law. A status that bestows on them dignity, rights and privileges. Conveniences and comforts, too, both physical (sarkari gaadi, ghoda, bangla, naukar-chakar — all kinds of State and stately amenities) and mental (a salaam or salute here, a bow or “jee Sir” there, a car door opened, an unsolicited discount at a shop, it is endless and so very pleasant and heartening).

All this can go crashing out of life if these officious and fair departments really become officious and fair and move against the really big offenders in their jurisdictions — big politicians and big business houses. They make a big deal of honesty and allied pretences. They can nit-pick in their criticism of offenders in the public space. After all, as they can very somberly pronounce, rule is rule, and there are rules ad

nauseam in rule books. But aren’t these departments and their executives offenders themselvesIJ The diligence and adherence to the rule book of Government executives goes out of the nearest window on the matter of taking action against big offenders who can turn their life into hell and mar their conveniences and comforts, if not position and job. If that isn’t criminal omission of duty, duty must be a Hawaiian bird.

This is the hurting truth of not just Government executives, but two other democracy pillars — judges and mediapersons. The real pain is that this truth extends to all spheres of activity, all roles and professions. The basic issue is that people go wrong and have been going wrong for a pretty long time. They go wrong in all kinds of ways. Trespassing the rights of others to commit offences like rape, murder and theft are some ways some people go wrong. That generates talk about laws to check all this. But law cannot work on its own. It needs people all the time to work it. And people who have the role of serving the law also go wrong. The pyramid chain of people minding the law or any business goes to very narrow top levels — the DGP when it comes to the police of a State, for instance, or the board of directors of company, or the Union Cabinet of Ministers with the Prime Minister at its summit.

They can all go wrong in perfect synchronisation, collectively, reducing the Constitution to tatters. For they are all people, human beings, coming from “we, the people of India”. All laws can fail in the end. What I am talking about is not just a theoretical hypothesis, a possibility. A close look shows how real it is, how very agonisingly real.

When we talk of “we, the people of India” making a mess of our life as individuals or as a nation, we talk about all the individuals who come together to make the “we” that we think can make laws for us and govern us. When it comes to individuals, however, externalities like laws fail, howsoever exquisite, nuanced and wordy they may be. Right human conduct can hold only if it is real, if it comes from deep

within, not needing any governance, legislation, policing, sentencing and punishing to be right. That’s tough to make happen, very, very tough. To begin with, it needs a thorough re-examination of what individuals are and what makes them move.

Are human beings just body and mind—flesh, bones, blood and skin with the capacity to think and feelIJ What exactly is lifeIJ What are the things or thing that goes missing from the body when it is reduced to a corpseIJ We may think we know a lot. Even if some of us don’t know some things, we may still think we know a lot because collectively, we do know many things needed for living our lives. But do we really know muchIJ Or anything for that matterIJ

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